Study of Bambusa Blumeana Bamboo as reinforcement for concrete beams

• Main Author: Penaredondo, Tom Gerard
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2007
• Subjects: Bambusa Blumeana bamboo; Bamboo construction; Bamboo; Bamboo work; Engineering
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/2155
• Institution: De La Salle University

Bamboo is one of the oldest and most versatile building materials with many applications in the field of construction, because of its strength and it is lightweight. In spite of the advantage, it has been restricted to temporary structures and lower grade buildings due to difficulties in jointing, a lack of structural design data and exclusion from building codes. Because of its rapid growth, bamboo emerges as an alternative as reinforcement for low cost housing projects. This research studies reinforced concrete bamboo beams, replacing steel bars for building constructions to attend cost reduction and feasibility of its use. There is a lack of research and information about bamboo performance and its use as reinforcement as well as its limit states. The objective of this study is to analyze and compare the tensile strength of bamboo as reinforcement on concrete to the tensile strength of the conventional reinforcing bars. Bambusa Blumeana bamboo specie was used to make reinforced concrete beams which were submitted to flexure test. There are still issues about the properties of bamboo and how will it affect its tensile strength. Data were obtained from three bamboo reinforced concrete beams with three reinforcements on it. Three bamboo-reinforced concrete beams were made for testing. The beams were tested under flexure and two-point loading was used. Load-deflection diagrams of the three beams were converted into moment-deflection diagrams, showing the critical points in the curve (Mcr, My and Mn). The graph showed that the three beams have the same graph with the reinforced concrete, proving that their behavior is the same. USD method was used in this study to examine if the bamboo-reinforced beams will behave like their theoretical counterparts. Using the physical and mechanical properties of concrete and bamboo, as well as the experimental values, Mcr and Mn is computed. Based on the experiment, yielding of the reinforcements occurred first before the crushing of concrete, which shows that all the beams are under-reinforced. With the values of experimental Mcr lower than the theoretical, this shows that bamboo-reinforced concrete cracks at a load lower than the computed counterpart using the USD method. Also, because the bamboo specimens that were tested in the laboratory failed at the grip, not in the center, Mn from the actual experiment was used in order to compute the yield strength (fy) of the bamboo. From the computations, fy of Bambusa blumeana bamboo as reinforcement is between 50-60 MPa. Bambusa blumeana bamboo is still stronger than concrete in terms of tension.